Words from WW Blog

WORDS FROM WW April 2, 2009
“Serving Strange People”

We just got back a few days ago from San Francisco where we spent a week vacationing. I’m trying to take more seriously the idea that vacation means “vacating”, as in the premises. From the view of things there were a lot of people who were vacating last week to San Francisco instead of from San Francisco.
We experienced a variety of people and, quite honestly, a lot of strange people. One man pretended to be a bush. He sat beside a lamp post with a bush in front of him. As someone passed by he would suddenly shake the bush and scare them. People were giving him money!
There were an abundance of street performers singing…dancing…performing magic…doing skateboarding stunts…playing the violin…drawing portraits. And there were a few people there leftover from the hippie movement- or shall we say never moved on from the hippie movement.
Strange…entertaining…amazing.
This past week we had several people from our five neighborhood churches meet together to talk and strategize about a project we’re doing together at the end of April in our neighborhood called “Community Hands”. We’ll go to homes in our neighborhoods and do simple work projects for our neighbors, tasks like clearing brush and leaves from yards, washing windows, etc.
There are very few people in our neighborhoods who attend one of the five churches. It’s not meant to be a “Build Our Attendance” effort. Instead it is just a small effort at serving our neighbors. It’s meant to be a visible expression that we have been called to be the hands and feet of Jesus. With two of the three grade schools closest to our churches closing at the end of this school year, there’s a lot of uncertainty and anxiety in our area. The people of God have an incredible opportunity to serve our community in non-threatening caring ways.
About a week ago a man was shot in the face by his girlfriend five houses away from one of the neighborhood churches. The house was discovered to be a place where drugs were prevalent. As our pastors talked about it, one of us mentioned that it’s kind of a wake-up call. There’s a shooting right down the street from us and its drug-related…we can’t ignore the presence of the Deceiver. There’s an evident mission afoot that seeks to move people and communities away from God. Perhaps another way of saying it is that there is a mission to cancel the presence of peace and promises of hope.
And so we’re going to go and serve some strange people and say with our actions and efforts “Jesus does make a difference. He does give hope.” We probably won’t encounter people disguised as bushes, but we may encounter some folks who have started trying to hide behind the bushes in front of their homes. Hide not to scare, however, but hiding because they are scared.

WORDS FROM W.W.
March 19, 2009
“The Progress of Back-steps”

I was walking through a hospital recently, pretending to know where I was going. When I came to a dead end and the wall in front of me didn’t open I knew I had missed something. I retraced my steps and came to a corridor that goes right and left. I had gone right when I should have gone left. (There is not meant to be any kind of political statement or inference in that whatsoever!)
It was one of those moments when you’re glad no one else knows what you were thinking or doing, because right at that point there were signs…BIG SIGNS!…telling me which direction I was to head in if I wanted a certain department in the hospital. Being your typical male, I hadn’t seen the signs because I had already made up my mind which way I was going. It was only in taking a few steps back…okay, a whole lot of steps back…that I saw the right way!
I think about that in relation to our spiritual journeys. We’re so focused on progress and moving forward that we often miss the value of back-steps. In fact, I believe there is a fallacy that is being lived out in numerous spiritual journeys today that says “If it doesn’t move me forward it must not be of God. If it isn’t a success story something’s wrong!”
But there are times when we have to step back to make progress. When you read 1 Corinthians you find numerous examples of the church in Corinth moving forward only to have to back-up. In chapter 3 of that New Testament book there’s the concern of people becoming drawn to different leaders. It was the first century spiritual equivalent to high school “letter jackets”. (By the way, I still have my varsity letter jacket hanging in my closet from Ironton High School; Ironton, Ohio…”Go Fighting Tigers!”) Each group thought they were making progress. There were the “Apollos-ites”, who thought Apollos was “the cat’s meow.” And then there was “Paul’s Pack”, who liked to identify themselves with the apostle who was known all over. To this Paul writes “I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it.” (1 Corinthians 3:2)
Ouch!
Time to back up the journey!
Paul let’s them know that they haven’t arrived, and in thinking they’ve arrived they REALLY haven’t arrived. The Corinthians need to back up a little bit and realize where they took a wrong turn. They need to realize that they missed some signs, some key teachings, some messages from the Lord.
How easy it is to confuse forward movement as always being progress, as always being the next step in the journey God is leading us in.
When we get into life situations that are difficult and perplexing and we seem clueless as to what should be our next step, back-steps bring us to a point that we’ve already visited but missed the meaning in. It brings us back to a place that seemed insignificant when we were first there, but in returning to it we see that it was huge!
Those back-steps retrace conversations, events, and decisions. They back us up to the point where we realize we made a bad choice that has had consequences. Or the back-steps bring us back to a point where we can see the whole forest instead of the most immediate tree in front of us. We can see the re-run of how the hand of God was apparent, even though we missed the original occurrence.
Progress sometimes can only happen by taking a few steps back. Call it “spiritual moonwalking” if you’d like, as long as you get back to where you can better see the hand of God.

WORDS FROM W.W. March 6, 2009

“The Mainstreaming of Styrofoam”

We go through “spells” of eating out. (Since we’ve been going through the Dave Ramsey course, Financial Peace University, that has decreased greatly. In fact, I think tonight we’ll go out to eat in celebratiuon of the facvt that we don’t eat out as much any more!).
When we’re in the midst of one of our “spells” our refrigerator gets stacks of Styrofoam take-out boxes in it. One has the remnants of a cheeseburger and fries in it. Another has a baked potato with three bites missing. A third one has lettuce that has lost the crispness of when it was first in a salad bowl. There in the refrigerator they are stacked like building blocks, each one in its own Styrofoam container. Sometimes if I have a meeting or some other kind of function and I miss the usual dinner time meal, I come home and take one of the take-out containers and finish off the remains.
And after I do that I toss the container. No one washes styrofoam around our house.
One and done!
Finished and diminished!
We often don’t think anything about it…unless I start re-heating the leftovers in the Styrofoam container. If Carol catches me she tells me that it’s not good for me, kind of like microwaving things in plastic containers, or eating microwave popcorn, or any of a number of other things. (Why can’t eating broccoli be bad for you?)
Styrofoam, however, has mainstreamed itself into our culture. It’s cheap! It’s so “mainstream” that we seldom think about environmental effects and repercussions with it. We use it, toss it, and go on to the next meal.
The problem is the mindset that is becoming more and more prevalent. Styrofoam is just one example of an ever-growing list of examples that communicate that we are short-term, limited-focused, self-absorbed people who live in the moment and don’t worry about the future. Jesus said something about that in regards to sparrows and lilies, but I don’t think he was telling us to live for the now and not worry about the repercussions of our decisions in the future.
I see “the mainstreaming of a Styrofoam mindset” infecting how we view relationships. Marriages that are long-term are in short supply. More and more people treat marriage as an episode of their life; and the next marriage will be another episode; and the next…you get the point.
We are more about Styrofoam relationships than fine china commitments. You don’t throw away the fine china. You treasure it. You display it in “the china cabinet”. There are no styrofoam cabinets, just trashed and “not yet trashed”. In our house, the china symbolizes something special. It’s precious and fragile, so it is handled with care. Chinaware is defined as “high quality”.
Oh, that our relationships would be considered that!
I’m not saying that ended relationships and divorce court marriages aren’t void of pain. Many of them are so painful the persons involved never recover or heal. But many relationships are void of value. There has been a lack of investment, and so it’s easy to toss it and start again. That’s why Styrofoam is so popular. It’s cheap and replaceable.
There are a lot of landfills overflowing with Styrofoam. The “white stuff” hangs around there like a hovering mother-in-law.
What if high-commitment relationships became more mainstreamed? What if there was such value placed on our relationships that we would hold them with care?
May our relationships have a little more “china” in them!

WORDS FROM W.W.
February 26, 2009
“Community Fractures and Casts”

I saw Gerry Doty last night at our Ash Wednesday service. He had a “boot” on his right foot- one of those “broken bone” kind of boots. Gerry had taken a tumble off of a ladder about 5 weeks ago and initially he was told that it was some torn ligaments in his ankle.
BUT a few weeks later the fracture became more apparent. It had been there, but hadn’t been seen. The boot cast will now bring stability to it as it heals from the brokenness.
A similar situation happened on a community-wide scale yesterday, Ash Wednesday. A decision to close seven elementary schools and one middle school was approved by the Colorado Springs School District 11 board. Two of those seven elementary schools are within a mile of our church. We’ve had significant relationships with them, and will continue until they are adjourned for the summer.
Decreasing enrollment district-wide and funding were the two factors that brought the fracture to the surface.
What happens now is even more crucial! What is “the cast” for our community that will bring stability to it as it heals from the brokenness? When the school system has had to look at “the bottom line” what is the “cast” that has the ability…the vision… to look beyond the bottom line?
When it is functioning according to God’s design for it, the church is the answer to that problem. The followers of God have the capacity to be the “cast” that helps the healing process slowly happen.
And, boy, is there a lot of healing that needs to happen!
But you see a cast is necessary. Gerry’s foot wasn’t getting any better. Either that or he just got used to the pain and discomfort! There was going to continue to be an unsteadiness in his walk until the support was added. He could have even adjusted his walk to mask the pain, but after a while the lack of proper support for the broken area would have shown up in the affect it would begin to have on other areas, like hips and knees.
When schools close there needs to be that force…that device that brings the community together. It’s not going to be a corporation or company. They have to look at the bottom line. It’s not going to be the local government. They’ve got their own version of splintering that they are dealing with.
It’s got to be…it’s got to be the people of God!
“Blessed are the peacemakers…” (Matthew 5:9)
“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)
Being “the cast” is part of our function, part of our purpose. Casts for fractures aren’t the most comfortable fit. They are about “proper healing”, not about what feels good. They are about the health in the future, not soft cushions for the present.
The church is the cast. Can you see the splatter spots from the “plastering experience”? It’s a little messy, but the end result is good.
My vision, and I’m hoping our vision, is of a community that is healthy spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and relationally. Perhaps you think I’m a dreamer. I’ll gladly be “cast” in that role! (Excuse me for the pun!)

WORDS FROM W.W.
February 19, 2009
“Facebook Revisited”

How many of us had one of our parents drive a carload of our friends with us to the movie theatre, the mall, the skating rink, or the middle school dance…and then hang around with us?
I don’t care how long my dad grew his side-burns, it was not cool to have him “hang with me and my friends”. I was always a little suspicious of parents who attempted to dress or look more like their kids’ peer groups than their adult counterparts. There was something out of sync with it.
Thus the current situation of Facebook, the internet social networking creation that is five years old. It was launched by a Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg, along with some of his classmates.
In the recent issue of Newsweek, Lev Grossman writes about how middle-aged adults have invaded the social networking space that was created for typical college students. It’s the internet version of hanging out with your son at his college fraternity party. Facebook has 150 million members, and its fastest growing demographic is in the thirty-somethings-and-older audience.
I know this to be true, not because of the college fraternity part, but because I’m one of those middle-aged adults who has invaded the space. My small college in Illinois has a Facebook alumni group that currently has 600 of our graduates as a part of it. Our church has a “Cyber Worship Think Tank” group on Facebook where we can dialogue about upcoming worship themes.
On Facebook I’ve connected with people I’ve lost track of. Grossman mentions that as one of the reasons so many middle-aged adults have become enamored with Facebook. I can connect with Bobby, who I haven’t seen since 10th grade. But not only that! I can see pictures of Bobby, his grandkids, his dog, pictures of the marlin he caught on a fishing trip off the shores of Florida. In essence, I can find out a lot about Bobby, perhaps more than I really want to know!
And now the junior high kids are leaving the dance to find some personal space out in the parking lot. The fraternity brothers have retreated to their rooms to listen to their Ipods since the parents have taken over the party downstairs.
It will be interesting to see what happens next for the younger generation. There’s that other social networking tool called MySpace. That pretty much sums up the attitude that many of them have about middle-aged adults coming too close.
Not that young people don’t like middle-aged adults! They would just like them more at a distance.
The challenge for the church is figuring it out! Figuring what out? Everything related to generational differences.
How to worship the Lord in the midst of multiple generations? We tend to worship generationally. This week is for the seniors. Next week is for the middle-agers. The third week is for parents with young kids. And once every six months we have the young people lead worship Perhaps…perhaps…worship is to be about what every generation, every person, every culture can bring to the Lord.
How to have a momentum that takes the church of many generations into the community as the hands and feet of Jesus? Momentum is mostly momentary. It’s something that we often assign to a group- like the youth group raking leaves- and is watched by everyone else. Momentum should resemble a Habitat for Humanity project where everyone can be involved in the building and feel a part of the finished structure, where everyone is present as the new family moves into their “new hope”.
How to allow “space” while creating “community”? I always was amused at churches that labeled Wednesday night as “Family Night”. The family came to the building together and immediately separated into their appropriate age groups for the evening.
There are many questions related to generations and the Body of Christ. There will always be the seeking of “generational identity.” It’s part of the growing up process. There is also the danger of “un-generating”, trying to invade the space of the younger generations because what they are doing looks “cool.”
And now in using the “c” word, I suddenly am feeling my age again. These days I feel “cold” a lot m ore than I feel “cool”!

WORDS FROM WW
February 5, 2009

“Mary-ed Martha or Martha-ed Mary”

I was recently graced by a new perspective on Martha and Mary that I hadn’t even thought about. (Sub-point: I’m amazed and blessed when someone brings a new picture to something I’ve only been able to see a certain way.)
Martha usually gets a “bad rap” for her attention to the work at hand and displeasure at her sister Mary’s “unconcern about the work”. Luke 10:38-42 gives us the story. It’s a mixture of sibling rivalry, jealous feelings, and conflicting views on what is most important at that moment.
Many of us have been there! We have experienced the feelings of injustice as we work our hands to the bone while our sibling sits in the recliner with the foot rest up. Or how many of us guys have been sprawled out on the couch while our wives have been perspiring over a hot stove? In our house “clanging and banging pots and pans” was a warning signal, not an accident!
Luke 10:40 is like a verbal red flare. “But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made…”
Had to be made!
There’s a sense of urgency! Dinner doesn’t just magically appear. Someone or… someones have to prepare it!
Verse 40 comes on the heels of a description of what Mary is doing. “Mary…sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.” She was living in the moment. Martha is overwhelmed by the moment. Martha asks Jesus “Don’t you care…?”
Here it comes. Jesus replies “Martha, Martha! You are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
What was the better thing? To sit at the feet of Jesus? For Mary…yes! For Martha…not necessarily!
There are times to be about the work, and there are times to sit, listen, and learn. Mary was at that sit, listen, and learn stage. Martha was at the serve point.
In churches there are people that we rush into ministry who are really still at the sit, listen, and learn stage. We have a bad habit of fast-tracking new believers, or spiritually immature believers, into “working for the Lord”.
Scripture speaks to growing in our walk with the Lord. We’re to be moving towards being Martha’s.
On the other side, there are many…many…many Christians who could be characterized as “life sitters”. They’ve been sitting at the feet of Jesus for so long their legs have gone numb. “What is better” isn’t continuous sitting. Even movie theatres have an intermission when the film is extra long.
“What is better” is different for each believer. The constant is a seeking after God.
Mary progresses. John 12 has her serving at the feet of Jesus by pouring expensive perfume on them and wiping them dry with her hair. Her sitting in worship progressed to serving in worship. That John 12 story also mentions Martha. She was serving!
Each one of us has to be asking ourselves whether or not we’re in a “sit and listen” time or “serving” time. We are probably called to bounce back and forth between the two, instead of being regimented in a certain way. Answering “what is better” is a question that needs to be asked each day.

WORDS FROM W.W.
January 23, 2009
“The Little Church That Could” (part 3)

“We’ve been set free to be!”
One of the members of the little church expressed that one Sunday morning. It was a call of affirmation and exhilaration. It expressed the new hope that was a part of this little group of God’s people. Each Sunday when they would gather to worship there would be the sharing of stories. For a long, long time the stories of changed lives and ministry had always come from some distant land through a missionary that the church supported financially. Or the stories would come from someone who had read something in the newspaper about someone in some other place.
Now the stories were close, heart-wrenching, and personal. The people believed that God still was using people in different places and distant places in ministry, but now the church was seeing the validity of their own faith and calling. God was calling on them to take a look around them, and they were experiencing the freedom, the unchaining of their spirits, to be who they were called to be.
Freedom is not just being allowed to do what others have not allowed one to do. Freedom is being who one has kept himself or herself from being because of a deafness to the voice of God. Freedom is being given permission to see the possibilities that one’s life can have.
There was a lady from the church who made pot holders out of old socks. For years she had given them to her friends as Christmas gifts. She had always had a hampering of any thought that came to her that she has a purpose in God’s plan.
And then someone asked her if she would consider making pot holders to be given as “We Love You” gifts for Valentine’s Day to the neighbors who lived around the church. She reacted with an expression of uncertainty, and then asked “You want me to…to help?” When the answer was “yes” there was a sudden change. Like rainwater seeping into the ground after a hard shower, “The Pot Holder Lady” realized in the depths of her spirit that God gave value to her craft and handiwork. There was an unbinding of her diminished spirit. Pot holders were new additions to almost everyone of the kitchens within blocks of the church. “The Pot Holder Lady” worked night and day to make sure all the neighbors received this simple expression of love.
She had been set free to be!
The gospel encourages one’s potential instead of keeping it hidden.
A paradoxical statement: Surrender releases freedom.
The little church became the little church that could. As God led there was the freedom to go! In going out, there was a gradual unbinding of the community. The spirits of oppression, hatred, poverty, and defeat were rooted out as people put in miles and miles of prayer walking up and down the streets.
No one knew when hope moved in as the new landlord replacing hopelessness, but it happened. Brightness replaced the dismal. Relationships became evident instead of divided people. Walls crumbled as evil foundations disappeared.
By the power of God, people were changed, and it began when His people were seeking to be who He had called them to be.

Going back to the first church, the fences got higher for protection. It resembled an aging fortress instead of a church. Hopelessness took up residency. Pastors came and went, until they stopped coming.
And the second church, the little church that could, began praying for the first church- that first church that had once been the place of prominence, where people went to be seen. The earnestness and authenticity of the second church’s prayers were heard by the Lord, and a long time later things began to change.
But that’s a different story for a different day.

WORDS FROM WW
January 15, 2009
“The Little Church That Could (Part 2)”

(If you haven’t read it yet, read the first part of this two-parter before continuing with part two.)

There was a second little church. They had always been small in size, but big in heart. A long time ago a core group of people from the church had prayed about what God’s desire was for them.
They prayed for a long time. Days became weeks, and weeks became months…and they were still praying.
And then one day an older woman who was wearing the results of a long hard life, void of glamour and glee, came to a Sunday worship gathering. She sat in the back, even though several people invited her to sit with them. In the midst of the gathering she suddenly stood up and started shedding tears of sorrow. People listened. A couple of women came and put their arms around her. Their was an expectation that she was going to share about a family member who was sick, or about someone close to her who had died, but when she spoke she simply said, “Excuse my tears, but they are tears of sorrow and frustration because no one loves this community.” With that she sat down. There were a few moments of silent anxiety amongst the people. At the end of the service the pastor closed in prayer.
The visitor was gone by the time the “Amen” was voiced.
The next Sunday the worship gathering took a detour from the plan for the day. Someone stood up and talked about how the core group had been praying for God’s leading and what His desire was for their church. The person then went on to say that he believed the previous Sunday’s visitor had given them the message: “Love our community!”
There were affirming head nods and “Amens”, and the church set about being the body of Christ in their community.
It was a community with many hurts and wounded people that needed healing. To the people of the city it was an area that was known as “transitional.” People moved in and out of the on a frequent basis. Some came on the way from escaping something else, and others came with intentions of escaping as soon as they could.
The little church left the building…and went into the community. One Sunday they gathered for prayer and then walked down the streets around them and prayed for the people that lived there. The next week they gathered for worship and then went through the streets picking up trash. The third week they intentionally went door to door and asked people (the ones who weren’t too afraid to open their doors) if there was anything they could pray about for them. The fourth week some of them saw a new family moving into one of the “worn-out” houses and asked the mother if they could bring them a meal as a way of saying welcome to the neighborhood. She nervously agreed to it.
It started to become a habit!
The little church would walk and pray as they traveled down the sidewalks that were almost all in disrepair. They prayed that God would break their hearts out of love for the people that lived around them.
Like objects that rise to the surface of water and float on it, the painful situations of the community began to become more and more apparent to the little church.
A 19 year old who was pregnant was seen more and more. Her family had kicked her out of their home and now she was renting an efficiency apartment in a building that looked ready to fall down. Her minimum wage job left her worn out at the end of the day, but the bigger problem was that making ends meet often meant going a couple of days during the month where she couldn’t eat because there was no money left for groceries. She knew it was not good for the baby growing inside her, but she didn’t know what else to do. An older woman from the church found out about the situation and took a meal to the young woman. The next week the older woman invited the expectant mom to her home not too far away for dinner one night. That time together resulted in an invitation for dinner the next week on the same night. The older woman listened, because there was no one else to listen.
There was a man who lived in the neighborhood who was an alcoholic. People avoided him, and with every sip of his whiskey he became increasingly bitter about life. Someone from the church knocked on his door and asked him if there was anything that he could pray about for the man. The drunk chased him off his front step with a string of profanities and the threat of violence.
But the man from the church came back the next week. This time he asked the man if he could give him a freshly-baked loaf of bread. The man who had been violent the week before didn’t know how to respond. He took the bread and closed the door.
The man from the church came back the next week, and the next week, and the next week, and the alcoholic slowly lost his thirst for the whiskey and gained a hunger for the bread.
And there were others, but that will need to wait until next week.

WORDS FROM WW
January 9, 2009
“The Little Church That Could”

Once…multiplied by a billion times there were two little churches.
The first church had been around since Adam. It had once been a large prominent congregation in the midst of the city. Many of the influential personalities in town were members of the church. There was a large endowment fund that the church kept adding in to. And when the church had a need- like softer, fluffier pew cushions- a grand event like a formal catered dinner would be organized and the money would be raised in an evening’s time.
No one was quite sure when the problems of the first church started. Many of the long-time members would point to the changing neighborhood around them being the slow fuse of destruction for the once prominent congregation. Others pointed to a particular pastor who stayed too long or not long enough. Still others focused on the deaths of some of the most influential people.
What was indisputable, however, was that the church was not what it used to be. From time to time a new resident in the neighborhood would show up for worship. Once in a while the person would even come back a second time. When one of the new neighbors showed up time and time again, and then offered to head up a project of remodeling the nursery that had simply been used for storage for a few years, there was a heightened sense of anxiety in the small congregation. They had never had someone offer to help. People had always been appointed, elected, pigeon-holed, or even voted in when they were away on vacation.
The “crisis” was taken care of by the elderly head of the Trustees Board. He informed the new person that they appreciated the offer, but were going to decline it. “After all,” he said, “as far as we can figure, the nursery hasn’t been used for five years. We don’t see the value in putting money into something that isn’t being used.”
Within a few weeks of that conversation, the boiler of the building’s heating system needed to be replaced at substantial cost. Perhaps it was all the attention of that situation that resulted in no one noticing that the new person gradually disappeared from view.
The church kept decreasing in size as more of its long-time members passed away.
The number of crimes in the area increased. The church built a high security fence around the property as a precaution to deter break-ins.
A new young pastor who didn’t know any better came to the church and suggested that the congregation reach out to the neighborhood.
It wasn’t received well.
People excused his idea as just being “a sign of his youth and pastoral inexperience.” Some told him that they were a small congregation that had too many problems on the inside of the building to worry about helping people outside the building. When he suggested that they sell the building and put part of the money into community ministry, calls were placed to some important officials in the denomination and the new young pastor soon became the young former pastor.
As the months and years clicked by the once prominent congregation became more and more invisible. There was growing resentment in the little group of people about the fact that they were no longer living in the glory days of their church.
It affected their relationship with God individually and corporately. Some even blamed God for taking away the gold, glitter, and glamour that they once had.
Their building became a fortress to guard against an enemy that they had a hard time identifying.
Years removed from their golden era, the few that were left would begin their description of the church, and excuse for avoiding the initiation of any new idea, with the phrase “We’re just a little church…”
There was a second church…but that story will have to wait until next week!

WORDS FROM WW

                                                                                                          December 31, 2008

                                                       “Valuable Virtues”

     Bernie Madoff!

      Just putting the name in front of people causes extreme reactions. Numerous celebrities have hit on hard times because of the money that was lost in the multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme.

      But worse then that is the billions that have been lost to charitable causes. Some of those causes directly assisted people who have been living below the poverty level.

      How does one look himself in the mirror knowing that his schemes will have a direct adverse effect on hundreds of thousands of people?

      I’ve been pondering that, not that I’m sinless. In fact, this whole Bernie Madoff situation has made me think about how many people have been affected by my schemes and selfishness.

     As persons of Jesus, what guides us towards “goodwill”? What detours me towards “my will”?

     As I study the person of Jesus I notice that his values flowed out of his virtues. He was just, hope-filled, loving, faithful, disciplined, among others. He knew who he was, what he believed, what his purpose was, and what his purpose wasn’t. He knew what he needed to do to be “on-mission”.

     How Jesus related to people, religious and irreligious, what he communicated, how he structured his time, what he saw as most important, all flowed out of his valuable virtues.

     What would you say Bernie Madoff’s virtues are?

     What would you say your virtues are? One of the definitions of “virtue” is “a worthy practice or ideal”. What would you say are your worthy practices and ideals? Put another way, “what do you practice that you also preach?”

     As we end a tumultuous year, it’s a question that needs to be front and face-to-face center for each one of us. If we are virtue-less, something else will fill in the space. Greed, lust, hatred, and jealousy have taken a number and are all waiting in line, like 5AM Black Friday shoppers at Wal-mart.

     It’s disturbing to know how Christians in general are viewed by the world, and characterized by the media. If you’re looking to do a composite drawing, mix in judgmental, mean, homophobic, condemning, and hysterical and you’ll come out with what “the picture” is. (This afternoon as I was driving home I got behind a pick-up truck that had this bumper sticker on the back window: “Bitter, gun-totin’, religious freak”. I kept a safe distance behind him.)

     I know…I know…it’s unfair, and yet in many cases accurate.

     How far removed from the worthy practices and ideals of Jesus!

     As a new year begins perhaps a personal deep look into the mirror of our soul needs to take place. Maybe a long gaze, looking for the ideals we reflect.

     Bernie Madoff is just another in a long procession of people and principalities whose roots had been planted in sandy soil. As the parable tells us, when our lives grow out of a shaky and shifting foundation something is bound to happen…and it usually isn’t for the common good!